Shaping the future of online payment processing: an autonomic approach applied to intelligent payment brokers

As e-Commerce systems evolve, and B2B models flourish, more and more complex payment transactions are performed electronically. A consistent topic periodically addressed by e-Commerce systems is how to reduce the costs associated with these electronic transactions, such that it is of minimal detriment to the growth in the volume of transactions that are conducted online. This question is of particular interest in the area of micro-payments, where the cost of the transaction is a significant percentage of the total cost of the goods exchanged between the merchant and the buyer. This paper proposes a novel architecture and associated artifacts for online payment processing providers and their client applications (online order capture and processing systems, payment capture and processing systems, and other online-based merchant software). New data structures, message exchange patterns and optimization algorithms are developed to support this new paradigm. These artifacts are molded following the concepts defined by the Autonomic Computing and Intelligent Agents disciplines.